DTW 2026: AI, Trust & Blue Blazers — The Challenge to Stand Out Without Putting the BS into BSS
There is an odd thing about attending industry events as a PR. If you are doing the job properly, you do not always get to see as much of the event as you would like.
Your version of the show is shaped by media briefings, client schedules, analyst meetings, corridor catch-ups, social drinks, and the frequent mental maths of whether you can squeeze in an impromptu session without arriving late to the next thing.
It is tempting to describe it, borrowing Scott Bicheno's line, as a smaller and more focused MWC. DTW does not have the same sprawl or theatre as Barcelona, but it ticks the boxes that matter for an industry event. The right operators, the right vendors, the right analysts, the right journalists, and enough senior people for conversations to feel worth the travel. The city definitely helps with that too. Copenhagen is great.
If you want a comprehensive overview of the show, there are plenty of journalist and analysts that have already done that. I’m here to talk about the comms from the floor. What themes seemed to cut through, what messages blurred together, and what that says about the challenge facing digital infrastructure brands.
The key theme emerging from the Bella Centre was AI — yes yes I know, but wait don’t run off yet — that can actually land. One of the better phrases coming out of the show was the idea that AI needs to be “flight worthy”. BT’s Peter Leukert used an aviation analogy around making AI safe and ready before it handles customers or critical operations.
The show tagline was “the future, faster” and that felt about right for the sessions I managed to take in. If AI is the future, and everyone seems to agree it is, how do we get there faster, safer and in a way that is commercially viable?
Trust was another central theme, outlined in the opening keynote and peppered throughout the agenda and booths.
That narrower focus is DTW’s strength as a show, but it also makes the industry’s messaging challenge harder to ignore as a PR.
DTW Ignite also confirmed that, sartorially at least, telecoms remains committed to the blue blazer as critical infrastructure.
I’ve written about this before – how my work life as a tech PR and social life as a football fan have two things in common. The line for the gents loo is always longer, and 90% of people wear the same thing.
The blue blazer problem is not just about the gender imbalance in the industry (or the lack of colour variety in business wear). It is a useful shorthand for the wider communications challenge. Up close, every company has its own ‘fabric’; nuance, specialism, roadmap and customer proof point. From a few metres away, the differences can be harder to spot.
AI-native. Intelligent. Autonomous. Composable. Trusted. Real-time. Outcome-driven. All important. All valid. But, when every brand is wearing the same language, standing out becomes much harder.
Shared vocabulary can quickly become camouflage.
That was particularly true of AI. At MWC, AI was everywhere in the broad, almost comedic sense. At DTW Ignite, it was everywhere in a more operational sense, baked into assurance, orchestration, BSS, OSS, customer experience, network automation and anything else that could credibly be described as “intelligent”.
The problem is not that companies are wrong to talk about AI. They would look out of touch if they didn’t. The problem is that AI has moved from differentiator to default.
When everyone has AI in the story, AI is no longer the story.
That does not mean AI was not meaningful at DTW. Quite the opposite. One of the more encouraging things about the show was that the AI conversation felt less abstract than it can at larger events. The stronger AI stories were not saying “we use AI”, they were explaining what AI makes faster, safer, cheaper, more resilient, more trusted or more commercially viable, which is what matters.
Trust plays directly into that. Telcos and digital infrastructure companies have a credible claim to reliability, assurance and responsibility, but trust is also where the communications challenge becomes most obvious.
You cannot simply say “trust us” louder than the company on the next stand.
Trust has to be evidenced through customer proof points, implementation detail, responsible claims, governance, reliability, security, resilience and a clear explanation of what makes one approach different from another.
Across parts of the OSS/BSS ecosystem in particular, the technology may be strong, valuable and solving deeply unglamorous problems that keep the industry moving. However, when almost everyone is talking about AI-native operations, intelligent orchestration, autonomous networks, real-time data, composable platforms and customer experience transformation, why do you trust one brand over another?
The risk is not that buyers think these companies have nothing to offer. The risk is that buyers cannot quickly tell why one offer is meaningfully different. If the difference is not clear, the conversation can drift towards feature comparison, procurement process or price. That is the challenge. How to stand out without putting the BS into BSS.
For smaller and specialist vendors, the answer cannot simply be to undercut on price or add another layer of AI language to the booth. The winners will be those that can define their category more sharply, name the customer pain more clearly, and evidence the outcome more convincingly.
Good communications should make the difference visible before the buyer has to work too hard to find it. Sometimes that also means showing a bit of restraint. Not everything needs to be AI-native, intelligent, transformational, game-changing or groundbreaking (my personal least fave). Sometimes the more compelling claim is the more specific one.
DTW showed an industry that knows where it needs to go. More autonomous, more intelligent, more trusted, more resilient and more commercially focused.
It also showed that many companies are describing that journey in strikingly similar language.
